marketing plan strategies

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General Requirements
Your plan must be a minimum of 1,500 words. Points will not be taken off for marketing plans exceeding 1,500 words. However, do your best to keep your marketing plan under 2,000 words.

  • Your plan can be for any ethical product/service. If you have a question on whether your product/service is ethical, contact me.
  • Do not write a marketing plan for a major company. For example, do not write a marketing plan for 3M or Apple.
  • You must cite five sources of marketing research. Three secondary marketing resources are required for the Industry Analysis section. Two forms of marketing research must be used the Sales Forecast section. You may use either primary or secondary marketing research for the Sales Forecast section.
  • If possible, use the AP Style for citing marketing research sources. If you do not know AP Style, do your best to identify the date, and page(s) of the publication plus the author.
  • Standard written English is expected. Points will be taken off for grammar and spelling errors. If you know you have issues with grammar and spelling, contact me and we will develop a plan for utilizing the services of the IHCC Writing Center.

Marketing Plan Sections

Marketing Plan Section Detail

This section summarizes the key points to each of the following sections—Industry Analysis, Market Strategy, Sales Forecast, and Implementation and Control. Typically, the Executive Summary is the last section written because the other sections must be written before they can be summarized. However, even though it is the last section written, it is the first section listed in the plan as it’s intended to provide the reader with a quick summary of the plan. Strive to keep it anywhere from 250 to 350 words.

  • Use NAICS code to identify the industry in which product/service will compete (5 points)
  • Identify the following facts about the industry (10 points). Remember, facts need to be supported by research. See the Marketing Plan content section of D2L for ideas on how to gather market research.
    • Industry size as measured in annual sales dollars. Size should include U.S. and international sales if applicable.
    • Identification of at least three industry trends. For example, total industry sales trends (growing and decreasing) is an industry trend.
    • Identification of at least three competitors. These competitors can be local, national, or international.

Upon completing the industry analysis section, you should have an understanding of the overall market for your product/service. This section requires you to perform “STP” on this market. “S” stands for segment. “T” stands for target. “P” stands for position.

  • Segment (5) points. Identify logical segments of the market. See Chapter 8 for ideas on how consumer markets can be segmented. For example, consumer markets can be segmented in several ways, one of which is by demographics.
  • Target (5 points) After you have segmented the market for your product/service, select a target market strategy. Chapter 8 identifies three target market strategies—undifferentiated targeting, concentrated targeting, and multisegment targeting. Select one of these strategies and identify why you have selected this strategy.
  • Position (20 points) Develop your marketing mix. Identify the following:
    product (5 points); place (5 points); promotion (5 points) and price (5 points). Remember, if you select a multisegment target market strategy, each segmentshould utilize its own positioning. This means a separate marketing mix should be developed for each segment in a multisegment strategy.
  • At least two forms of market research supporting the reasonableness of your sales forecast (10 points).
  • First years sales forecasted by month utilizing the format provided in an Excel spreadsheet. (5 points).
  • 2nd and 3rd year total sales utilizing the format provided in an Excel spreadsheet (5 points).
  • MAKE SURE TO ALSO INCLUDE YOUR COMPLETED SALES FORECAST SPREADSHEET IN THE MARKETING PLAN DROPBOX.

Forecasting sales is part science and part art. The “science” part (actually, the math part) is fairly straightforward. A spreadsheet will be provided to assist with the math component of sales forecasting. available. The format is revenue = units * price per unit.

The “art” part is a little more challenging. You must create a sales forecast which is “reasonable.” Reasonableness is based upon the logic of your sales forecast. For example, if you writing a business plan for a new restaurant and you forecast $10,000,000 in first year sales, this would be unreasonable if established similar restaurants near the location of your proposed restaurants have approximately $2,000,000 in annual sales. How then do you determine whether or not your forecast is reasonable? You conduct market research. (Again, see the Marketing Plan content section of D2L for ideas on how to gather market research.)

  • Identify the key steps you would take to implement your marketing plan. Also, identify how you would ensure that marketing costs are properly managed (5 points).
 
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